Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [128]
“I’m going back to sea,” I told him.
He nodded. “Probably the best thing for now. The sea gives a man time to think.”
I held up the book. “I’ll treasure this.”
“Go on with you,” he said, and gave me a shove.
I went down to the Victoria Dock and looked around and found a ship bound for Spain, and signed. Ma slapped my face when I told her.
“How dare you!” she cried. “How dare you do this to me!”
“Ma,” I said, tears springing to my eyes, “lightning don’t strike twice.”
“How do you know!”
“Look, Ma,” I said, “I could get run down by a cab tomorrow. Think about it sensibly.”
“Don’t you talk to me about sense,” she said, and for a moment I felt sorry, but it was too late. I had two days.
“Ma,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, “I have to do something. It’s only Spain. The sea gives a man time to think.”
“Oh,” she said bitterly, “you didn’t get any of that done up there all these months then?” motioning with her eyes to the ceiling.
But she calmed down as she always did, and I let her bustle around me bringing soup and bread. She doesn’t say anything anymore about not wanting me to go.
Our captain calls all hands
We sail tomorrow
Leaving these fair pretty maids
In grief and sorrow.
It’s in vain to weep for me
For I am going
To everlasting joys
And fountains flowing.
Funny how sad that sounds.
Then began my ramblings again, and there were adventures and girls and good friends and I got myself a concertina and learned to play “Santy Anno.” The whaling was all washed up and I was through with it anyway. It was traders and clippers for me from now on, no more of these long voyages. I shipped to Spain and Holland and the Baltic shores, and once to Alexandria, and was home fairly regular. Once or twice I saw Ish and we were civil but strange with one another. Once I saw her with the fiancé, a good-looking sort, taller than me. I hated seeing her. Sent me home and back to bed with my head under the pillow and an aching mind. And I was well on the way to being one of those salty types who can’t abide the land for more than it takes for him to spend his cash, only I discovered a liking for learning.
here are turnings and twistings, a tangle of wool that needs sorting out and winding into a ball, but I ain’t doing it. It’s broth, all sorts thrown in and floating, the things that don’t fit, lost things, offshoots. In and out we roll, waves of time and impression, rolling forever on the shore, waves and waves becoming ripples and ripples, smaller and fainter till sleep comes.
Sometimes we walk along by the old places. It’s changed, the Highway, like a face changes, till you see the face beneath the face beneath the face.
There’s a song, you probably know it:
Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bosun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain’s gig.
God knows how many verses it’s got. I once heard a man sing the whole thing on stage at the Empire and you should have seen the audience falling about. Funny, isn’t it? You’d bring the house down if you got up onstage and made an act of that, someone once told me. Probably true.
’Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Ramsgate span,
That I found alone on a piece of stone
An elderly naval man.
Of course, you know his story. You find a naval man with a story on just about every other stone around here. They’ve seen a lot, these people of Ratcliffe Highway. They don’t mind me.
One of my shore runs I met Mrs. Linver coming out of the stale bread shop, practically knocked her over in fact. A funny old woman, she’d become, with those wild, staring eyes and her frizzy hair gone thin and tarnished.
“Oh, Jaffy,” she said, “you never come and see me!”
So much time had passed. Her greeting surprised me.
“I’m not home much,” I said, shifting awkwardly. Actually I was very glad to see her. God knows why. She was just like the old days,